http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
You didn't object when they forced motorcyclists to wear helmets. It's
for their own good, you figured. And it was no skin off your nose, since
you don't ride motorcycles anyway.

You didn't protest when they passed mandatory seat-belt laws. You
couldn't see what the big deal was -- after all, you've always buckled
up.

You didn't say anything when they pushed tobacco ads off the air, or
when
they drove up the price of cigarettes with sin taxes, or when they tried to
classify nicotine as a drug. Smoking, you believed, is nasty and unhealthy;
why shouldn't the government discourage it?

You kept quiet when they made air bags compulsory. When they passed laws
to keep adults from owning guns. When they tried to censor the Internet.
When
they decreed that every new television must include a "V-chip." Yes, all of
these eroded Americans' freedom to make decisions for themselves. And yes,
they further empowered the government to regulate the way we live our
lives.
But none of them discommoded you personally, so you didn't see any reason
to
speak out.

Do you think the lifestyle police will stop goosestepping when they get
to something you do care about?

Meet Kelly Brownell. He directs the Center for Eating and Weight
disorders at Yale, and he doesn't like your diet. "The contribution of diet
to poor health in America is staggering," he says. "It's an epidemic."

Brownell doesn't stop there. He isn't satisfied with trying to persuade
you to eat less junk food. He wants Big Brother to make you eat less junk
food. In a dispatch from New Haven, the Associated Press reports that
"Brownell believes the government should subsidize the sale of healthy
food,
increase the cost of non-nutritional foods through taxes, and regulate food
advertising to discourage unhealthy practices."

In the name of "public health," the antitobacco bullies have gotten away
with restricting speech, crushing freedom of choice, penalizing the
consumers
of a lawful product, and demonizing the sellers of that product. Brownell
thinks the food bullies should be able to do no less.

"To me," he has said, "there is no difference between Ronald McDonald
and
Joe Camel." Pause to recall the hysterical outrage that R.J. Reynolds's
cartoon figure evoked -- a Washington Post columnist called Joe Camel ads
"as
dangerous as putting rat poison in a candy wrapper" -- and you get a sense
of
just how far Brownell would like to go.

Societies do not usually lose their freedom at a blow. They give it up
bit by bit, letting themselves be tied down with an infinity of little
knots.

As rules and regulations increase, their range of action is gradually
compressed. Their options slowly lessen. Without noticing the change, they
become wards of the state. They still imagine themselves free, but in a
thousand and one ways, their choices are limited and guided by the
authorities. And always, there are what seem to be sensible reasons for
letting their autonomy be peeled away: "Safety." "Health." "Social
justice." "Equal opportunity."

It is easy to grow accustomed to docility. That is why eternal vigilance
is the price of liberty. Not because liberty is easy to shatter. But
because
it can be softened and dismantled with the acquiescence of the very men and
women from whom it is being stolen.

Many Americans no longer understand this, which is why the government
now
dictates everything from the words that may appear on wine labels to the
volume of water toilets may flush. But Brownell and his ilk understand it
very well. To those who snicker at his goal of hitting snack-food makers
with
heavy taxes and forbidding the use of Ronald McDonald in advertising,
Brownell has a reply:

"If 20 years ago somebody had said, 'I predict that states will recover
health care costs from the tobacco industry for deaths; I predict that an
icon of smoking advertising, Joe Camel, would be banned from billboards,'
people would have said, 'Oh, that's horrible government intrusion.' What is
now taken for granted, 20 years ago would have been thought of as
impossible."

Exactly.
Watch as it unfolds. Already other voices have taken up Brownell's call.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest -- the food fanatics who
periodically issue reports denouncing movie popcorn and Chinese food --
declares that "diet and lack of exercise kill as many people as tobacco"
and
agrees that a tax on Big Macs and Double Stuf Oreos "makes eminent sense."
Hanna Rosin writes in The New Republic that a tax on fatty foods "can
actually be a less intrusive policy than regulating tobacco" and asks, "Is
it
really such a crazy idea?" US News & World Report hails the "Twinkie tax"
as
one of "16 Silver Bullets: Smart Ideas to Fix the World."

Soon you'll hear about all the children whose lives will be cut short
because they got hooked on junk fook at an early age. You'll see references
to the 300,000 people "killed" each year by fatty diets. In time there will
be lawsuits and congressional hearings and moving testimony by the
"victims"
of chocolate and butterfat. Politicians, sensing another interest group to
pander to, will demand strict controls over candy ads. Ben and Jerry will
be
transformed from kindly Vermont hippies to foul peddlers of heart disease.

Preposterous, you say! Laughable! Absurd!

Philip Morris used to think so,
too.

Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. This column originally
appeared on November 12, 1998. Comment by clicking here.